In the video, the speaker reflects on her family's relocation to a historic town in middle Tennessee and the disconcerting discovery of a Confederate monument. This monument symbolizes a narrative that romanticizes the Civil War and masks its real causes and implications. While settling in this picturesque town for better opportunities, the speaker is confronted with the uncomfortable legacy of the 'Lost Cause' narrative that is still pervasive in educational materials and public consciousness. This experience propels her to reconsider what "better" truly means for her children and their future.

The speaker, a mother to three daughters, draws from personal stories to illustrate the key components necessary to redefine a better life for the next generation: belonging, safety, and truth. She relays instances of racial exclusion and insensitivity her daughters faced in "good" schools, concluding that physical safety is not sufficient without emotional safety and a true sense of belonging. Recognizing the inadequacies in historical education, she emphasizes the need for a truthful and complete telling of history to enable future generations to understand their identity and past more comprehensively and accurately.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. relocate [ˌriːloʊˈkeɪt] - (verb) - To move to a different place to live or work. - Synonyms: (move, transfer, shift)

My husband and I, we decided to relocate our young family here to middle Tennessee.

2. miseducation [ˌmɪsˌɛdʒʊˈkeɪʃən] - (noun) - The act of providing misleading or inadequate education. - Synonyms: (misinformation, misguidance, ignorance)

...the miseducation that is happening of my children Is right before my very own eyes.

3. pseudo [ˈsuːdoʊ] - (adjective) - Not genuine; fake or false. - Synonyms: (false, fake, spurious)

It's a pseudo historical narrative, and it is based in these three parts.

4. narrative [ˈnærətɪv] - (noun) - A spoken or written account of connected events; a story. - Synonyms: (story, account, tale)

...a story that historians now call the lost cause. It's a pseudo historical narrative, and it is based in these three parts.

5. detained [dɪˈteɪnd] - (verb) - To keep someone in custody or under control, often for legal reasons. - Synonyms: (arrest, hold, confine)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Had been detained by police.

6. acquiesced [ˌækwiˈɛst] - (verb) - To accept something reluctantly but without protest. - Synonyms: (comply, consent, yield)

My daughter's fawn response meant that she just acquiesced.

7. exclusion [ɪkˈskluːʒən] - (noun) - The act of denying someone access to a place, group, or privilege. - Synonyms: (omission, barring, rejection)

Children are not hardwired to be able to handle that kind of exclusion.

8. indigenous [ɪnˈdɪdʒənəs] - (adjective) - Originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native. - Synonyms: (native, original, aboriginal)

...excluding indigenous people and those of us who trace our lineage through the enslavement period.

9. curriculum [kəˈrɪkjʊləm] - (noun) - The subjects comprising a course of study in a school or college. - Synonyms: (syllabus, program, coursework)

...created an entire curriculum for after school kids.

10. trauma [ˈtrɔːmə] - (noun) - A deeply distressing or disturbing experience or condition. - Synonyms: (shock, distress, suffering)

A lot of researchers say that racial trauma elicits three different responses.

Why we need to redefine "BETTER" for the next generation - Shanera Williamson - TEDxNashville

It was the summer of 2006. My husband and I, we decided to relocate our young family here to middle Tennessee. Just in a couple of weeks of being here, I took my then 4, 6, and 8-year-old little girls and I took them on a walking tour of our brand-new historic town. The downtown is one of those places that are just wonderful to be a part of. It's got cute little boutiques, it has great restaurants. It also has a lot of local merchants. When you look at a place like this, that is the perfect setting for a Hallmark movie.

You know, I believe that there are about three different types of people who like to go on walking tours of historic towns. One person just doesn't do the history, they just go shopping. No judgment. Another person just takes in the broad strokes that the history person has to tell you. But there are other people who walk up and they read every plaque on the historic markers. Guess which one I am. Guilty. Our tour started on a grassy patch of land. It was perfectly manicured and it was right in the middle of a roundabout. Now that roundabout is on Main Street, and right in the very center of the roundabout stands the tallest statue I have ever seen in my life. Let me tell you, it just made me run right up to it. I wanted to know, who is that and why is it here?

So I walked right up to the top, to the base of it, and etched in the granite were these words in honor and memory of our heroes, both private in chief of the Southern Confederacy. No country ever had truer sons, no cause, nobler champions, no people, bolder defenders than the brave soldiers whose memory this stone is erected. When I saw that, my mouth dropped, I could not believe what was in front of me. My eyes scrolled up the 32 ft of the pillar until it rested right at the very top. There's a 6 foot, 6-inch person at the top of that. And he was carved out of Italian marble. I also learned from our tour guide that the day that they hoisted him up to the very top, he nicked his hat a little bit. And so all the people in the town lovingly referred to him as Chip.

You know, as I was sitting there looking at all of the things around me, I just had this innate need to pull my children closer to me. I wish I could tell you exactly what it was that made me fearful. I don't know what it was. I just had this instinct that I needed to protect them from something. As a matter of fact, I recognize that I'm standing here parenting children who are the descendants of enslaved people. And altogether, we are being told that the cause of the Civil War is just. It was a little bit too much for me right then.

And so I decided, well, you know, the miseducation that is happening of my children is right before my very own eyes. You see, history is the story that we say about who we are. And in that time period, right after the Civil War ended, there were some people who just wanted to make sure that their family members were remembered honorably. But in doing that, they also created a story around the war, a story that historians now call the lost cause. It's a pseudo historical narrative, and it is based in these three parts. The first thing is that the Civil War was just. The second thing is that the Civil War is not based on slavery. And then thirdly, well, even if it is based in slavery, it wasn't that bad. As a matter of fact, some good came for the enslaved people.

Well, you know, as I was sitting there listening to all of that, I realized that my children deserved to hear something better. One of the reasons that we are here in Middle Tennessee is because of a job opportunity. We were here because we got a job promotion, and we were so excited for all of the options that that opened up for us. We had this opportunity to purchase a home in an area where there's appreciating values in real estate. Wonderful. We also had the opportunity that we could now be in the number one school district for public schools in the state. Nothing I thought I could have done before.

Also, the option that we had was to be in a place that was physically safe. And look at those people. I mean, those are the people that I was bringing up. I wanted safety for them. And so when I think of all of those things and I looked at their little faces, all I can say is I wanted better. And then I kept asking myself, how in the world did I get in the middle of this town square? The reason I did is because, for these children, we were trying to do whatever was good. We thought good schools, plus a safe community, that that means success in life. And that was the formula that we had for this is how we're going to raise our children.

Well, it's been 18 years, and y'all, I'm standing here right now telling any parent here there is no such thing as a formula for how you get your kids to any type of success. Not only that, I also know that there is a redefinition that I need and that I want to offer to you of what doing better actually means for the next generation. Well, that word better is just so elusive to define. I mean, what do we mean by better? It's also really difficult because it's a comparative term. It always is like comparing something to something else. And so in our family, I know that the thing that I was comparing things to was the life that my parents had.

Both of my parents are survivors of the Jim Crow South. My mother and father were born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina. They lived their entire formative years under separate and unequal. Let me give you a little lesson of what that actually looked like for them. So separate and unequal meant that in their schools they were, what should we say? Severely under-resourced is the best way to put it. They never had textbooks that were new. As a matter of fact, they got their textbooks from the white school across town and it was sent to them when the new version came out. So my parents had the version that was out of date. A lot of times it had pages ripped out or whole chapters are just gone from their books.

They told me about this one story when the principal opened up a brand new box of microscopes that had been sent to their school. Now the kids were excited to get something brand new. The moment that the principal opened it up and saw there was something new in it, he knew it wasn't for them. He boxed it up and he sent it across town over there where better is found. I believe that right now I am a part of that generation that we owe a lot to those parents who lived through that. We stand on their shoulders and we want better than what they had.

I started out with the definition that they had, though. I'm the first generation to go to integrated schools. There's no way in the world that my parent's definition of better can stand what I need now for myself and for my children moving forward in a whole new generation. So I have decided that there are three essential ingredients that are needed for better. They are belonging, safety, and truth. No longer am I only looking for access to those places that were once exclusive for us. No longer am I just trying to get over there. Now that I am in those places, I want more. I want better.

Well, you know, I believe that better is the kind of thing that we've got to look for when we look for belonging. Belonging is one of those things that's right in the middle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's right there in the middle. So it's something that we all really do need. John Bowlby is a researcher who studied some of the Children who got separated from their parents during World War I. Now, in his scientific research, Bowlby found some things out that we would probably innately already know were true. But I love the fact that we've got science to prove it.

So with all of his research, he decided that or he figured out that people are hardwired to pursue meaningful connections with other people. And if this need is not met, it results in loneliness and mental distress. Well, educational psychologists have taken Bowlby's research, and they went a little bit further, and they talked about this idea of belonging as being something that, when you put it with academic success, it is a necessary component for students to be able to perform well. I know a little bit about this need for belonging. As I told you, I've got three daughters. When one of my daughters was in the eighth grade, she was invited to a sleepover.

Now, she was the only black girl invited because they were just classmates of hers that were invited to the sleepover. While they were there, there was another little girl who said to her, you know what? I don't even think of you as black. You know what I mean? You just speak so well, and you're in all of the top honors classes. It's as if you aren't even black. Now, when we know that we're about to enter into a hostile environment, we get ourselves ready. We have our emotional selves ready. We've got our mental selves ready. But when you're a child, and you're on your way to a sleepover, you're just wide open. You're not expecting it.

Let me give you even one more. When you're a parent, a mama bear of a child who you finally allow to sleep over at somebody's house after years of saying, no, you can't do that. Your guard is let down, and you don't even expect that they're going to come in and have that kind of an experience. Children are not hardwired to be able to handle that kind of exclusion. And, you know, belonging is something that just did not happen in that environment.

Another one of my daughters was in an economics class when she was in high school. So she was a little bit older. You think maybe she can handle some of this? In her economics class, they talked a lot about personal finances and social discussions. Well, my daughter, because of the home she came from, living with us, we talked a lot about the wealth gap that exists in the United States of America. And we talked about the systemic reasons why that wealth gap exists.

So my daughter goes into her classroom armed with this information from our dining room table. And she offers up some suggestions to the class that are just different from everyone else. Again, only black girl in the room. Her teacher, and I'm going to just assume the very best of him at this point. Right. Her teacher said, well, why don't you just go up and tell the whole class what your community has to say about this?

A teenager in high school should never be asked to speak for an entire group of people. Belonging was something that we could not expect in these good schools that I finally got access to. But, you know what? I realized it was on me as a parent to make sure she had belonging elsewhere.

So we joined a black church. I made sure that I was in a black social club of moms. And we brought our kids together because we needed to neutralize the race factor at some point in their lives and make sure they had a place where belonging could happen.

But you know what? It doesn't just happen. Belonging. That's one of those things that we need to happen in our schools. The other thing we need to happen is safety. Now, safety is something that we would expect because a lot of us put our kids in schools that don't have gang violence or things going on in the hallways that are physically violent.

I would suggest to you that safety that is really good for the growth of a child. It is more than just physical.

So after elementary school, we wanted to sidestep some of the racial insensitivity and the things that we heard were going on in the middle school of our top-rated school system. And so we decided we're just going to scoot over here and go to this smaller school. It was a Christian school. And so I thought, this is going to be a better place.

I thought back then, better meant wearing a plural pleated plaid skirt to school. And if we can just do that, I'm going to give my kids better.

Well, in that place around middle school, this came out, the iPhone. Wonderful thing happening for middle schoolers. One of the things that happened was my girls, who are now in their 20s, they still talk about this. They remembered that there was racial joking that happened as a normal part of life. It was something they had to learn how to navigate.

So this little thing right here, this was one of the jokes that happened constantly. The joke was, what's the difference between a black iPhone and a white one? The black one runs faster and the white one is smarter. Just this idea of narratives of black people being negative, being passed down and shuffled to my kids when they are middle schoolers going through the hallway.

Do you remember how horrible middle school was? On top of all of that, they had to learn how to navigate racial jokes that were just part of everyday life.

When one of my daughters was in the seventh grade, she's only 12 years old, she was in a math class. And in her math class, the teacher decided one day that they were going to talk about current events. The current event that was happening right then was Henry Louis Gates Jr. had been detained by police.

You see, his neighbors thought that he was trying to break into a home in their upscale neighborhood. Well, this Harvard professor was trying to enter his own home. The teacher's takeaway was, he shouldn't have looked so sketchy. My daughter said, that don't look sketchy to me. As a matter of fact, she talked about how much he looks like one of our uncles as she went into this interaction with her teacher.

They went back and forth a couple of times, and then my daughter's seventh grade eyes filled up with tears. She didn't know what else to say. The teacher saw that, he got a little bit defensive, and he goes, what, am I not supposed to say the word black anymore? We can't even say that.

Then in a moment that I'm sure he would probably take back, he got down on her desk level and he said, well, I'm saying it black, black, black.

A lot of researchers say that racial trauma elicits three different responses. It can be fight, flight, or fawn. My daughter's fawn response meant that she just acquiesced. She did everything she could just to get through that situation. And she tried to downplay it, y'all. She came home and didn't even tell me about it right away because for her, she was just trying to survive.

You know, what I realized in that situation is that physical safety is not enough. That's just the bare minimum of what we need for our kids. If we really want better for them, we need a place where they're emotionally safe as well as physically safe.

You know, the third thing that I think we need if we really do want all of our kids to thrive, it is an accurate and complete telling of history. Remember, I'm that girl. I like history. And I read all of the plaques when I go to a museum or when I go on a historic tour.

Now, we don't have time today for all the things that I would tell you need some fixing. But let me just say this. Our educational system in the United States has really failed us because we are not telling a complete and accurate story of who we are as Americans. As a matter of fact, our history is either being rewritten or just erased altogether.

And I believe that it is robbing all of our kids from what they really need. Because the reason we study history is that we want to understand what happened and then how that relates to our life today. So if we're not telling them the truth of what happened, how can they apply that truth to their real life here?

So that's why truth has to be a part of this equation. I believe belonging is necessary. I believe safety is necessary. But truth has to be a part of the equation. You know, when I think back about my initial tour in my little town, this was not telling us a complete and accurate version of history.

As a matter of fact, what happened in that environment was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the people who erected that statue. It's a group that started here in Nashville, Tennessee, about five years before they put the statue up. The same people who created that statue also created an entire curriculum for after-school kids. And in that curriculum, they were telling some of the lost cause as part of the narrative of our story.

Well, there are some textbook companies that loved it because they thought, ooh, this is easy to tell kids about it. So they implemented some of that in their textbooks. Well, the textbooks didn't just stay in one place. They got shipped out all over the United States of America. And so the lost cause narrative did not day in that roundabout in this town. It is something that still infects our schools today.

Well, I host a podcast called Brown mama Bear. If you can't tell, I am very much of a mama bear. And one of the things that I love to do is to help parents who are trying to raise black and brown children in predominantly white spaces. Now, when they do that, often they're sending their kids to white school because they want better for them. But I try to help them go, hey, there's some other things you need to consider in this.

Well, we have a group chat with six mothers in our group text, and one of them dropped something in the group chat just a couple of weeks ago as school was starting. And it was an assignment her child was given about family origins. We saw the lost cause narrative in this family origins. The question was asked, what country of origin did your family come from? When did they come here, and what were the circumstances when they got here?

Can you imagine what my children, the descendants of enslaved people, would have said to the answer to that? Instead of it just being a light conversation for kids to get to know each other. It's a heavier thing, but it's really got its roots in the fact that slavery wasn't that bad. We need to accurately put that in context to talk about it with kids when they're ready, but not to just throw it in as something elementary school kids talk about.

And it is not okay to say that we're all immigrants. Now, there are plenty of immigrant stories that I want us to know and I want our children to have. But when we say that, we are also excluding indigenous people and those of us who trace our lineage through the enslavement period. And so I want us to say an accurate and complete version of history.

So when I think back on what it looked like when I was in this tour, I'm like, you know what? There are so many reasons now that I understand why I just wanted to protect my kids. There was something inside of me that knew that this could be very dangerous. And so I am saying I took some time to think through what are the essential things that my kids need, not the things I think they need, but what they really do need.

And this is what I found out. It's not just because my kids are black that they need them. These are some universal things that your kids need as well. They are belonging. All kids need belonging. They need the kind of belonging that doesn't get snatched away from them when they're least expecting it at a sleepover. All kids need safety. They need the kind of safety that cares for their emotional being as well as their physical well-being. And all kids need truth.

We need to know the truth of who we are. Because if you know the good, the bad, and even those parts that are extremely uncomfortable for the teachers to talk about, it helps. And so I believe that when all three of those things happen for all of our kids, not just my kids, for your kids too, I believe when all of those things happen, it gives us a brand new picture. And that's the brand new picture. It gives us belonging, safety, and truth. And right there in the center where they all overlap, that is where better is found. Thank you.

Education, Parenting, History, Inspiration, Safety, Truth, Tedx Talks